


Wyvernbreath

by dornishsphinx



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Nohr | Conquest Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornishsphinx/pseuds/dornishsphinx
Summary: While searching for wyvernbreath leaves in the hope of saving their comrades from the poison of Kotaro's ninja, Kaze and Corrin bond over their choice to betray Hoshido and their kin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for corriny-kamui over on tumblr for the 2017 Winter Wonderland exchange organised by fe-gift-exchange.

Mokushu may have lain in the sunlit lands, but its western border was close enough to Nohr for a certain chill to permeate the air, the sensation burrowing deeper and deeper through her skin the further into the woods she walked. It almost felt like home. The trees were right too, just like the ones below her tower window had been. They were bare but for a thin layer of hoarfrost, looming together in a thicket which cut up the thin, grey sunlight into patches on the ground. Nothing like the pink ones that had been dotted all over Kotaro’s castle-town - no, they’d been well-spaced and pretty, the same type the ones lining the streets of Shirasagi had been, where each breeze had seemed to rip half the delicate little blossoms off their branches and make them dance madly in the air.

It was a comfort to be away from them now, amid these spiky, bare branches and shadows.

The entrance to the pocket realm had been hidden in a hollowed-out grand oak. Mentally, she kept going over her steps back to it. Backwards for ten minutes, then past the row of stunted bushes then-

No, wait. Was it the other way around? Sudden anxiety bit into her stomach. She ignored it as best she could, scanning the low-lying brush.

That morning, she’d woken to find herself tucked into bed with a teary-eyed Elise waving a rod over her, an assortment of servants and retainers hovering worriedly in the background and no memories past collapsing face-first onto the world map she and her siblings had been poring over the night before. As it turned out, Mokushujin ninja had a penchant for poison. The particular one Kotaro’s men used had worsened overnight, only truly locking into the victim after the healers had done their work. All those with knowledge of the healing arts had been drafted into emergency mode, but were still having trouble extricating the damned stuff. Luckily, the poison wasn’t fatal, but it came with a whole host of side-effects specially crafted to impede a soldier. Paralysis. Temporary blindness. Hallucinations.

Wyvernbreath was the best hope they had, Mozu had told them right before she fell unconscious. Leo had searched the miniature library he was amassing within the realm and informed her it was recognisable by its tiny orange flowers, each pointed like a little star, typically found tangled in the brush of the forest floor.

As one of the less-afflicted soldiers, Corrin had taken it upon herself to find it. She rubbed her side, where the shuriken had sliced past her. The shallow wound, under its dressing, was more itchy and irritating than truly painful. Even if she had taken a hit, her tough dragonhide had saved her receiving more than a small dose of the poison.

Still. Everything was going wrong. To top it all off, she had no idea when Father’s orders would next arrive. For all she knew, they could already be here, ordering an immediate march to Hoshido.

Ugh. Yet another thought of Hoshido. Why couldn’t she put it out of mind?

It was at this moment that she noticed the first snowflake that had managed to permeate the tree layer swirling down in a pirouette. She caught it in her palm and stared at it, first in surprise - was it truly so late in the year? It would explain the cold front settling in even this far east, but it only felt like yesterday that she’d been started receiving Father’s tasks - then in resigned irritation. She needed to pick up the pace before she had to dig through a whole layer of the stuff to find the wyvernbreath.

She wiped her hand against her cape, delicate flake long since melted away, peered into the gloomy murk that was the forest floor, and set to work. She’d not spent fifteen minutes scrabbling through the dirt and fresh snowfall when she heard a whistling sound - then a muffled thud.

Fear gripped her as she became aware of how alone she was out here.

She turned - and lurched back at the sight of a body lying prone a little ways behind her that had definitely not been there moments before. After the initial shock wore off, she crept towards it. The man was dead, a fresh bloodstain soaking through Mokushujin garb onto the white layer of snow coating the undergrowth. She turned him over. A knife was stuck in him.

“Who’s there?” she cried, craning her neck up to the tree-line, hand on Yato’s hilt.

The next moment, Kaze was before her, sunk onto one knee with a bowed head. Surprise quickly gave way to relief at the sight of him. She sheathed Yato - which she’d near swung on instinct - and sighed.

“Kaze, we’ve talked about this,” she said, trying to act reproachful, “You’ll give me a heart attack one of these days.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d forgotten to give her some warning before a sudden apparition. The first time it happened, they’d been in the middle of the pocket realm. She’d gone for her dragonstone before realising it was him. The resulting mess had then taken the rest of the day to sort out - if not that entire week if you counted how long it took to stop Camilla hovering over her even more than usual and for the rest of the army to stop stalking around after Kaze, suspicious of such a slippery - and obviously Hoshidan - recruit.

“Please forgive me, Lady Corrin,” said Kaze, lowering himself even further, voice heavy with contrition. Snowflakes floated down onto his head.

“Oh - no, it’s not that serious. Get up, will you?”

The relief his presence had brought her was rapidly fading, replaced with worry. Kaze had definitely been hit by a Mokushujin’s shuriken. She knew it for a fact - he’d been the one to take it in her place. He ought to be resting in the castle.

“Thank you, my lady. I didn’t mean to cause you any alarm.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She grabbed his arm and pulled him up, using to opportunity to check on his eyes. It was for naught, though - the shadows made it impossible to see if the pupils were still blown unnaturally wide or if it was just their natural reaction to darkness.

“Why are you up?”

“Prince Xander was worried about you.”

Hardly an answer to her question, but she let it slide.

“Xander sent you? But how-”

Leo had told him she’d left, probably. Or any other soldier who was still upright. It didn’t really matter, she supposed.

“Indeed, my lady. We’d received word from the scouts that some of Kotaro’s men could have followed us to these woods. The prince thought it best to send someone who could keep up with them as your back-up.”

“Oh, I see.” Set a thief to catch a thief. She hadn’t realised Xander trusted Kaze enough to send him off on errands - though thinking on it, Xander actually had praised him a few days ago, offhand, saying that while her new recruit had done an exemplary job during the last few skirmishes she should think more carefully about picking up any more suspicious strays.

“He also instructed me to test your reflexes,” he added after a moment, a little smile on his face. “The prince said it would be a reminder to you about the importance of not wandering off into an uncharted wood without mentioning it to anybody. His words, of course.”

Of course he did.

“So that’s what the body was for.”

“Well. Not entirely,” said Kaze, a faint flush of embarrassment lighting up his face. “It was more of an accident, really: he lost his footing while we were fighting.”

“I still passed though, right?”

“Of course. With distinction.”

Corrin laughed; Kaze’s lips quirked.

“Seriously, though, why are you up?” she pressed. “You can’t tell me you weren’t hit. You were right in front of me.”

“You are correct. However, I’m a ninja,” he said. “We learn how to deal with poisoning.”

When it was clear he wasn’t planning on elaborating, she changed tack.

“Well, since you are the ninja here, Kaze, how do you suggest we proceed?”

“With caution. And it would be best for you to return to camp quickly. A commander being separated from her troops while in enemy territory isn’t ideal. Especially when the Mokushujin are actively looking for you. I’ve managed to take out a couple of them, but there will be more.”

Corrin knelt down by the dead Mokushujin, glancing at Kotaro’s mon where it was emblazoned on his upper back.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised they’re angry. We did kill a lot of their comrades.”

“They’re also angry about Kotaro himself. They believe it was our force that betrayed and killed him.”

“They do? But that’s not-”

She broke off. Kaze nodded, but remained silent. It dragged. His brother’s name tugged at her lips, but she left it hanging. There were more important things at stake than family drama, no matter how much she wanted to talk to him about it.

“I can’t leave yet, though,” she said instead. “I need to find a certain flower, for the poisoned soldiers. It’s-”

“Wyvernbreath, correct?”

“Oh, did Leo tell you?”

“Mozu, actually. She’s woken up. I was sent to track some of it down, since she’s still too badly affected to move. I’ve nowhere near her talent for gathering herbs, but it’s still quite a common plant around where I grew up, so I’m familiar with how it looks and where it ought to grow.”

“It’s Hoshidan?” She looked around the dank, dark forest. “Can it even grow in these conditions?”

“Easily. According to Mozu, it’s actually native to the border regions,” he said. “We must have imported it to try and replicate its effects - though we never quite succeeded, of course.”

“So you don’t know how to make a cure out of it?”

“Oh, no, we do. What we were never able to harness was its poison.”

“Wait, it’s poisonous?”

“Well, yes,” said Kaze, with a furrowed brow. “You did see the state of the soldiers, correct? The poison they’re afflicted is partially made with wyvernbreath leaves. We were never able to fully replicate the process they use, but we did manage to create a neutralising agent. We need the root of the same plant for it, however.”

“Hm, so you have to use the poison itself in order to create the cure.” She smiled at that: lately, she’d begun looking for any hopeful premonitions she could. “I like that.”

Kaze hummed, scanning the ground in front of him before settling into a gait that, despite being a strange combination of crouch and walk, he managed to make look fluid, even elegant. Ninja. They moved at a brisk pace, the snowfall seeming to increase with every step they took. Soon, they were leaving footprints. Kaze began moving strangely to avoid leaving tracks, but when Corrin looked back at them, she couldn’t help but feel a flutter in her heart. As a child, she’d rarely been allowed outside to make such marks on the fresh snow. Felicia had once made it snow inside after getting the reason for her despondence out of her - and she’d delighted in it - but this was something else entirely.

“How do you know what the Mokushujin are talking about?” she asked, after a little while.

“I am a ninja,” he said simply.

“True, but how could you know? It’s not even been two days since Kotaro’s death and you’re still poisoned so-” Wait. “Kaze. You have actually been resting, right?”

This time, the silence was a confirmation.

“Are you serious? We can’t afford to have you out of commission later because you didn’t bother taking time to heal.”

“I’m afraid there’s little choice. I’m the least affected soldier capable of keeping up with another ninja. You’ll recall the state Niles and Shura are in, after all.”

She preferred not to. It felt like an intrusion, overhearing their faint, nonsensical mutterings in response to whatever hallucinations the poison had conjured up for them. She’d done her best to leave them alone after that.

“While I realise that I’m not currently at peak capacity, I shall still do my best to fend off any trouble that comes our way. You needn’t worry. I’ve fought in worse condition.”

Oh, for- “That’s not the issue, Kaze. Look, I can find the wyvernbreath myself.”

“You were also hit, my lady. If I shouldn’t be out here, neither should you.”

It was oddly confrontational for Kaze. She wondered why, briefly, before continuing.

“I’m fine now. I have dragon blood, remember?”

Kaze paused, then frowned. “Dragon blood impacts the effect of poison? I didn’t - Lord Ryoma, for one, was as affected as anyone else, so I thought-”

“And I don’t recall Ryoma being able to turn into an actual dragon.”

“My apologies. You would know the capabilities of dragon blood far better than someone such as me.”

Honestly, she had no idea if dragon blood had any impact at all on poisoned bloodstreams at all, but hopefully, it would convince Kaze to go back and rest.

“I’m not returning to the castle, however. I have a mission to complete.”

Gods.

“Fine. But if there are any more of Kotaro’s men, get behind me. I’m not letting you get killed for the sake of pride.”

They continued on in silence, Kaze all but on his hands and knees examining the forest floor.

“I thought you said these were common,” Corrin said eventually.

“They are, but it’s near winter. Most that haven’t died will have been harvested by the poison-makers so they won’t run out of stock this season.”

A longer silence. Then, she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“You said Ryoma was poisoned once?”

Kaze, about to move forward, hesitated. “He was.”

“What happened?”

“I wasn’t there.”

Again, it was uncommonly brusque of him. Ah! It was obvious to her, now. The revelations of the last battle must still be needling at him. She waited. He relented.

“It was - he was part of a delegation, to the Fire Tribe, I believe. An assassin managed to strike him with a poisoned arrow from an uncommonly far distance. There was no way of noticing them, they were so far off. They were never caught.”

“They needed such an accurate archer to get anywhere close to him? Hah. I suppose they needed to. Ryoma’s not the type to wander off into the forest alone.”

She grinned at Kaze, trying to elicit a smile out of him in return. But he just stared at her, for a long, long moment. Then, amazingly, he started snickering. Corrin stared at him in disbelief. A smile, even a chuckle, sure. This, though? This wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen from him before.

“Sorry, I just - the idea that you think Lord Ryoma wouldn’t-” He broke off, collected himself, and smiled at her. “Lord Ryoma has wandered into many a dark forest alone in his time, believe me. Do you know how many times I had to listen to Saizo going spare over his complete lack of self-preservation? I-”

He broke off.

Wordlessly, Corrin laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Kaze, do you-”

 _Do you think they’ll ever forgive us?_ She couldn’t say it, fearing the answer.

“Do you ever regret joining Nohr? I know - I know what your brother said must have affected you.”

“Your cause is noble. I have never regretted joining it.”

“Neither have I,” she lied.

Her eye caught on something, a few metres away.

“Wait,” she said, in a hushed tone. “Wait, Kaze. Look.”

Barely visible, something orange peeked above the new layer of snow, striking amid all the whites and greys. Corrin approached, cautiously brushing away the snow. There it was, tangled in the undergrowth just like Leo had said. Wyvernbreath.

“We found it,” she said, breathlessly, before spinning around to grin manically at him. “Kaze, we found it! They’re going to be okay! They’re all going to be okay!”

“We did,” Kaze repeated, sending her a smile. “I’ll dig it out. The root can be tricky to extricate from the rest of the brush and we don’t want to leave any behind.”

“Ah, good point. I’ll keep watch for Kotaro’s soldiers while you do.”

Kaze’s gaze lingered on her a moment too long before he nodded, uttered a quick “of course, my lady” and got to work. She lifted her face up to the silver-grey sky, barking out an exhausted laugh. The snow was coming down in flurries now, buffeted by the wind, but, in her elation, their cold kisses felt exhilarating.

“We’re going to be okay, Kaze,” she said.

“It’s hard to imagine otherwise, being at your side,” he replied, carefully sliding the plant into his bag. “Ah - I believe that’s all of it. We should get going.”

“Right,” said Corrin, still dazed by the sudden euphoria that had seized her. “Don’t collapse on the way back, now. I don’t know if I can carry you, even in dragon form.”

There was the smile she’d been looking for. “I’ll try not to.”

With that, they turned and began the walk back through the long shadows and dappled grey sunlight.


End file.
